Scott,
I used to work for a company that sounds exactly like yours! Battwings by any chance?
TRex
I worked for them too, in phone support. I really got disinterested in keeping my job when I found out that the standard response to phoned-in bomb threats was-- get this-- to hush them up as quickly as possible. The only time we actually got evacuated was when the insurance agency upstairs had a bomb threat and called the cops.
Two weeks before I left, a “strange Hispanic male” was seen on the security cameras going into one of the mens’ rooms and leaving some white powder on the countertop. Despite the fact that the cops came and police-taped off the room until it could be investigated, none of the employees were told ANYTHING (including “There was a situation, we’re investigating it, but we don’t currently consider it a threat”) until some eight hours later, after most of those who had been working had already gone home. I found out about it on the smoking porch from a colleague who’d been there since 7 AM and seen the cops come in.
One employee was fired for throwing a chair at his supervisor; when HR cleaned out his personal locker, they found a handgun.
I now work somewhere that I’m not in fear for my life. It’s a tiny little answering service with doors that lock and a boss who WANTS us to lock the doors and call the cops when someone threatens to come up to the office and kill us.
Yeah, I took a (small) pay cut to work where I do. But my life isn’t worth $10.85 an hour, which is what I was making with three years’ seniority.
My company us a little like Scott’s - we had swipe cards until last week, and now they are “proximity” cards, that you just hold up to the reader to get through the doors. We have to use the cards at the employee entrance, then to get out of the “coatroom” through a turnstile, and then (for me) twice again to get to the lab where I work. Some people need to swipe a few more times than that, but usually, once you’re past the coatroom, its 2. The worst is having to carry something from one end of the building to the other…push buttons to get back through a swiped door, then a couple o swipes at the other end, then push buttons to get back…bleh. But the new cards are much easier - sometimes I can just sort of move my hip close to the reader and its enough - other doors I have to hold it up directly in front of it, but still, its a lot easier than the swipe cards that had to be swiped 2-3 times because they were picky about how fast you did it 
Not only do I need to use my ID to activate a proximity sensor to get into the building, I have to do this to move from room to room within the building. Part of the reason is that we have data switches & fiber muxes that manage U.S. government data. So we need to know who was in which room and at what time, in case something happens. There are scary looking “WARNING - SECURE AREA - RESTRICTED ACCESS” signs all over the place. You get used to it after a while.
Guards with machine guns. Picture ids worn at all times. Barbed wire. Turnstiles everywhere that have to be opened with your id card and a pin. Classified areas. Guard towers. Random car searches.
Why, yes, I work at a national lab, why do you ask?
[sub]And don’t even THINK of asking about the radioactive death monkeys…[/sub]
Heh, I like my new security a lot better… Last place it was swipe card entrance, uh, thingies (like electronic turnstiles, an alarm went off if you stepped through without swiping your ID), then security guards in the lobby (never saw guns tho), through a metal detector gate and all bags/purses/lunchbags either through a metal detector or
hand inspected. (“PB&J. All clear!”) Also, all the doors to the ops center also required that you swipe a card to get in.
Where I am now all employees have keys, and there’s a camera in the entryway so we can buzz in or escort anyone else. Still an airline, but only the ops is located here so there is 1) no freight and 2) no airplanes taking off. All anyone here could do would be screw with our records big-time.
It’s a lot quicker to get in in the morning…
Keys. And that’s about it. I work for a small publishing company - certainly there’s little anyone would want to walk off with. Our computers are mostly elderly, the “artwork” would make a lovely addition to the bottom of the Rhine-Rhone canal, and what we publish goes out of date pretty quickly.
My company issues photo ID badges, and we have to use proximity cards to get into the building. There is a guard station at each entrance which used to be staffed 24/7 until a couple years ago. Now from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM on weekdays it’s not staffed and anyone can drive right on to the company premises. On weekends and off hours it is staffed. There is a camera conspicuously mounted at each guard station. though. There are security personnel throughout the facility at all times. The other morning a semi truck drove on to the premises and security stopped him and made sure he wasn’t carrying anything suspicious in the trailer before letting him through. As for individual bag checks, I have never seen this done. People can also bring personal electronics in and out of the facility unchecked, which surprises me. Overall, the security where I work seems too lax for the kinds of work that we do.
I work at a maximum security prison. Security is pretty good. I have to pass thru 7 heavily barred doors that can only be opened by a security guard to get to my office. I’ve got a ‘panic’ button I wear that I can push, and it will identify both precisely who and where I am, so 6 burly guards will rush to the scene. I hope I never accidentally push it while I’m in the bathroom.
Wow.
The security where I work (see me OP) is pretty tight, but upon reading others’ posts, I see that it can be much tighter.
I’m used to it now, having worked there two and a half years, but at my previous jobs, security was virtually non-existent. Sure, they’d issue me a photo ID and what not, but I’d never have to swipe it. On occasion, I’d have to show it to someone, or wear it prominently to identify myself (I worked for a subcontractor of the largest telecommunications company in Canada, and would frequently have to go into their offices).
In any case, where I work now, there are big signs in the parking lots advising everyone that this is private property, they’re under camera surveillance, etc. On top of that, we’re not allowed to take pictures within the building (I guess somehow that would expose proprietary secrets) - but people do anyway. Just don’t use the flash, and you’ll be fine.
- s.e.
One of the customer sites I am based at quite regularly (2-3 weeks in a month) has security guards with guns at the front door - photo id and sign in, then they escort you to your workstation, where they hand you over to another security guard who must keep you in sight at all times (except in the bathroom, but you have to ask to go first, and they stand outside). The server room that my desk is just outside has fingerprint scanners to get in or out, and close security guard supervision at all times while in there. All doors require swipe cards (in & out) carried only by the guards (and a few other select employees - I can’t get one because I’m a contractor). Most areas are also covered by security camera. You also have to book approx 2 days in advance to work there, and specify which hours on what days, so that they can approve your access. I can’t even leave the building without being escorted out - quite a pain when you have a meeting next door or something.
Oh, almost forgot.
I had a job for a bit in a major Strip casino out here in Vegas doing IT stuff. From time to time I’d have to fix a computer inside one of the cages. Whenever a non-cage person has to be in the cage a large armed security guard would follow the person around to make sure you weren’t going to walk out with $500,000 stuffed in your pants. The guards were actually pretty cool because a)guarding someone sitting at a computer is pretty easy and b)they got to sit on their ass while guarding said IT guy. The rest of the physical security was pretty tight but the network security was a joke[#1].
Slee
#1. On my third day I found out that they had an AIX server that was being backed up by FTP’ing the files to another server because no one in house knew how to write and crontab a shell script to run a tape backup. This process took along time. I told my boss that I could write a script but I would need a login to the machine. My boss replied that I could just login as an admin. I asked for the password and he said it was admin. I somehow kept my jaw from dropping and then logged onto every machine on the network using the username admin and the password admin. (Username and password changed to protect the stupid)
We all have a magnetic key card. We have no picture IDs or anything like that. The magnetic key cards are pretty strong so people put them in their wallets, purses, or jackets so they won’t forget them and then just wave the entire item at the scanner. It’s not uncommon to watch a lady wave her purse, followed by a guy flap his jacket, who is in turn followed by a guy who wiggles his butt to get in. It’s like some kind of security hokey pokey.
Why the hell these things aren’t erasing the info off our credit cards I don’t know.
On my second day I discovered that every single user on our network has their D: drive set to share, full access, no password.
Blackclaw
I didn’t go into how bad the security was on PC’s, just the servers. I had access as admin to all the servers. The sad thing about it was my ~proto boss got mad when I turned on a modem so that a vendor could login and fix a problem (I had the ok from my real boss). At the same time my ~proto boss didn’t realize that I had access to all of his ‘secure’ machines. It was incredibly stupid. They ran NT-Novell for the most part with some AS/400 thrown in to make life difficult. I am amazed that they haven’t been hacked yet. I suggested going to a *nix environment to a)make things more secure and b) save money but I was the only person onsite who had used non-MS products besides my Boss so I was shot down. The thing that really got me was that these ‘IT Professionals’ refused to learn and only acted to protect their turf. Sad, sad people.
Slee
I work for the Australian post office, and they are pretty paranoid about security, especially after September 11. There’s also the whole sanctity of Her Majesty’s mails bit. This includes not only strict laws against the theft of, or interference with, postal articles, but also the misuse of information -in other words, POSTAL WORKERS - WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!! MWAHAHA!!
There are security measures in place where I work, but I’m not at liberty to say what they are. Just rest assured that they’re not very exciting.
I work for my city’s transit company at their head office, which is in a public office tower, i.e. anyone can just sashay into the part of the building where our offices are. However, there’s proximity card access to our office space. (Interestingly, the office space is EXTREMELY large. The portion of it where I am is put together in such a way that I could walk from my office, on the extreme west end of the building, to the extreme east end of the building without going into the corridor. This passes through three numbered office rooms.) My keycard also gives me access to the other offices in the building. After hours, there is a grille that’s locked across the elevator well; but you can radio security, tell them where you’re going, and get in.
Suffice it to say that security around the metro and bus installations themselves is about one million times tighter. The control centre for the metro is in an undisclosed location. (However, I’ve managed to visit it.) 'Nuff said.
As for computer security, the list of websites we’re not allowed to visit is in constant mutation and does not appear to make any sense. (I can’t visit the Straight Dope :mad:, or the TM Homepage, but I can visit the Unaboard, as well as a very disgusting humour site from the Netherlands.) Also, they have little buttons that you can click if you need to visit a blocked site for work purposes. (I’ve only done that once - I presume that invokes some kind of logging procedure - so I use it for when I actually do need it for work, such as when I had to go to the Grand Prix homepage because surprise! I was preparing a web page on public transit to the Grand Prix.)
We’ve recently tightened security at the little “Federal land management agency” field office where I work. In fact, we completely reconstructed the public entrance so that you can’t go upstairs or to any other part of the building without going past the receptionist’s desk, magnetic keycards at the employees’ entrances, keypad-secured access to work areas, training in computer and physical security, etc.
We get a lot of crap about it from the locals: “So you think the Taliban is comin’ to get ya, huh? Haw haw haw!”
Well, no. The fact that it’s happening now is just coincidence - some of this has been in the works for years now (takes a long time to do things in the government, you know.)
The threats we’re responding to are closer to home. We get it from both sides. Our offices have been bombed by, and employees threatened at gunpoint by, the militant state’s-rights extremists (such as the “Posse Comititus”); and wild-horse-holding facilities have been fire-bombed by the animal-rights extremists.
Our state office in Cheyenne shares its facilities with the IRS. Security is extremely tight there. (By our standards, anyway.)
Oh, my security badge…
The one I was issued on my first day (with a picture of me smiling - that was before I found out how boring that job would be) had my company’s logo on it, my name, and my employee number.
I broke it at some point, because I’m always needing to swipe it when I go out for smoke breaks. I managed to temporarily fix it, using tape, but put in a request for a new one over the company intranet. The new cards they’re issuing no long have the companay logo or employee number. They don’t seem to want anyone who would see this card to know where I work…
There’s still parts of the building across the street I can’t access, such as accounting.
After a certain hour (I forget if it’s 7 PM or 11 PM) you can’t even leave the building where I work (there are three). You have to call security across the street, and they’ll come over and let you out.
Occasionally, there have been alarms, and doors within the buildings automatically shut and lock. (Gee, how are we going to get out in case of a fire?)
The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever encountered there is when a bomb threat was called in. I got off the bus, made my way up the hill, and saw a ton of people outside. There were police cars everywhere. Finally they told us to go into the building and look for suspicious packages. WTF? I’m now part of the bomb squad? 
- s.e.
Haven’t actually statred work yet, but my next job will be in the Federal Courts building in downtown Houston. Pretty tight security, Federal Marshals, metal detectors, security cameras, getting “buzzed in” to chambers, etc.